House to vote on Ukraine aid

House Republicans posted a one-page bill that will provide loan guarantees to Ukraine, teeing up a vote on Thursday on approving economic assistance meant to help ease the crisis in the eastern European country.

The bill does not contain an exact dollar amount, but it gives the Obama administration the ability to immediately provide loan guarantees to the beleaguered nation by modifying an existing program. If the White House determines it needs the ability to draw more aid, it can request additional authority from Congress, according to a senior Republican leadership aide.

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“We’ll vote soon on legislation to help aid the Ukrainian people,” Cantor told reporters after a closed party meeting Wednesday morning.

The loan-guarantee bill was posted late Tuesday night on the Rules Committee website. It gives House Republican leadership the ability to schedule a vote on the bill as early as Thursday before the chamber leaves town for the week.

The bill contains no language that would sanction Russia, which has stationed troops in Crimea, a peninsula in southeastern Ukraine. Republican leaders said they will consider ways to punish Russia for the aggression.

At the same time, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is beginning to sharply criticize President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in the region, saying “steps that had not been taken over the last three or four years, frankly, allowed [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to believe he could do what he is doing without any reaction from us.”

On the other end of the Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also increased pressure on the Obama administration, pledging to support the president “however we can” to keep the situation in Ukraine from spiraling out of control.

“This is a moment when President Obama is going to have to lead,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, arguing that Obama has “eroded American credibility in the world” through his handling of other foreign policy situations.

Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing Thursday to examine the administration’s policies toward Ukraine. A trio of administration officials are slated to testify: Eric Rubin, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary in the bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs; Paige Alexander, assistant administrator of the bureau of Europe and Eurasia for the U.S. Agency for International Development; and Daleep Singh, deputy assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasia for the Treasury Department.

While that hearing is public, House Republicans and Democrats have separately requested private briefings from administration officials on Ukraine, aides said Wednesday.

The committee is also poised to move forward Thursday with a resolution that condemns Russia for its “violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.” The six-page measure also calls on the Obama administration to enact sanctions against Russian officials, such as visa, financial or trade restrictions.

That measure is separate from an actual sanctions package against Russia that key lawmakers are working on. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview Wednesday that he and Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) — the panel’s chairman — are assembling a menu of possible sanctions that the U.S. government can impose on Russia.

The options include targeting the financial assets of Russian officials who were involved in harming protesters in Kiev or who were responsible for the incursion into Crimea, Engel said. Congress could also endorse kicking Russia out of the G-8.

“We’re looking at everything,” Engel said Wednesday of potential sanctions. But he emphasized that in terms of economic assistance to Ukraine, it was critical to funnel aid “as quickly as possible.”

The Foreign Affairs panel would handle any sanctions, while the Appropriations Committee oversees the loan guarantees.

Engel also said he and Royce might travel to Kiev before the Ukrainian elections in late May as a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people. The visit could come as early as next month.

The trip would be intended to “show them that we’re not forgetting about them, that we have our eye on them,” Engel said. “I think the best rebuke to Russia would be if — because of what they did — the West is now more intense in terms of trying to support Ukraine and pull them westward, rather than eastward.”

The House appeared to be moving at a faster clip than the Senate, where Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) are working on a response. The top senators on the Foreign Relations Committee have been putting together an aid package to Ukraine that would include at least $1 billion in loan guarantees to the nation.

“I think we’re going to move quickly on the condemnation, but there’s much more to it — sanctions, aid, much more,” said Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat. Those things, Durbin said, were “much more complicated and it may be hard to accomplish in a short time.”